Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Critical Thinking is Lost on These People
Random thoughts on a headache-inducing article.
1. I love this: "Why should we be afraid to test our worldview against reality?" asked Bill Jack, a Christian leadership instructor who leads groups across the country for a company called Biblically Correct Tours.
Why should they be afraid to test their worldview against reality? I mean, I often test my "I'm actually married to Kristen Bell and she's deeply and madly in love with me," worldview against reality. Then I see that two-bit good-for-nothin' skank flirting it up with Craig Ferguson on the Late Late Show and I get so mad. Doesn't she know that it my reality we're happily married and live in the suburbs and she stays at home all day to raise our 2.5 beautiful children and our dalma-apsa-labahusky Mr. Thumbkins?*
And believe me. I test my "I'm married to Kristen Bell" worldview every day when I call and call and call and try to get her to tell me that, yes, she remembers the wedding and, yes, she'll have dinner ready for me when I get home. She doesn't pick up the phone. I'm guessing that means she doesn't know how to work a phone.
Either way, if you're absolutely sure of your worldview, like I am, there's absolutely no reason to be afraid of testing it against reality. Because, y'know, having an external baseline with which to judge your own worldview is helpful and good...
2. As a young-Earth creationist, he asserts that the vast majority of the rocks and fossils were formed during Noah's flood about 4,000 years ago. Most paleontologists date the T-Rex to 65 million years ago.
I love the balanced reporting. "This guy says World War II ended last week. Most historians say it ended in 1945." I don't know who to believe. Won't somebody come and help me decide!
3. "There's nothing balanced here. It's completely, 100 percent evolution-based," said DeWitt, a professor of biology. "We come every year, because I don't hold anything back from the students."
Okay, I've got an idea. We start organizing evolution tours of the Creation Science Museum.** A real biologist takes some students through and explains how a thorough and discerning reading of reality does not lead to the conclusions made by the creation science people.
Somebody get PZ Myers on the phone, stat!
*Um, disclaimer. I'm not actually crazy. I've got the "Not Crazy" stamp to prove it and everything...
**I'd link to the real site, but quite frankly, I don't want to. Find it yourself if you want. You'll be thanking me for the mercy I offered in linking to John Scalzi soon enough...
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5 comments:
I would pay like $500 for a tour through the Creation Museum led by PZ Meyers.
I love that you linked to Scalzi's report. The "Oh NOES" photo alone is worth the trip.
But see, if you have enough faith, any "reality" with which you come in contact only reinforces your original viewpoint. God planted fossils to test our faith, in layers of rock that appear to be millions of years old! Isn't God a sneaky smart deity to thumb his nose at the deductive powers he gave us like that?
You can't argue with young-earth creationists. Just can't do it. Once someone has thought it through and made a conscious choice to adopt that viewpoint, so much of their identity and their emotional process is involved in it that it would take the psychic equivalent of a falling piano to the head to dislodge them.
I would love to tag along with a party of atheists and crash a creationist museum sometime though. Yes, the atheists' very presence would probably inflame the local denizens' martyr glands to the point of an unfortunate incident. But the events leading up to said inevitable incident would be hilarious as all get out.
Hee hee. I just ran across this:
The Journal of Creation, a peer-reviewed magazine of creation science. I, um, I think they don't get it. If you can't get an article in to Nature, that doesn't mean you should go start your own science magazine. That means you should re-think your "science."
You're right, Fiat Lex. You can't argue with them. It's why I become more and more convinced that I was never actually an evangelical. I could never lie to myself that completely.
Well if scientists aren't going to twist facts to make them conform to religious dogma, someone has to do it. They're only filling a niche created by market demand for fairy tales and ignorance.
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